


Window

by orphan_account



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: M/M, Mental Instability, Sad, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 08:43:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9431219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "I'm going to jump out of that window one day.""I'll be right behind you."





	

“I’m tired.” Josh hears the voice, but doesn’t react. There’s a moment of silence before Tyler speaks again. “I’m so tired,” he says, even though he knows Josh heard him the first time. Josh picks up his head and looks over to Tyler. Tyler, who looks pleased to have finally gotten some attention.

“You can sleep,” is all Josh says. Tyler frowns. He sits up, entirely naked, body unabashedly on display.

“You should fuck me.” Once again, Josh doesn’t react. Tyler hits him lightly on the calf. “You should _fuck_ me,” he repeats. This time, Josh laughs airily and sits up, facing Tyler, equally naked.

“We just had sex.”

“I always go back for seconds.” Josh snorts, shakes his head, and doesn’t say anything. He looks around the room, Tyler following his gaze. Eventually, Tyler ends up looking at the wide window in the corner of Josh’s bedroom. It overlooks a busy street.

“I’m going to jump out of that window one day.” Josh quirks a brow and looks back to Tyler.

“I’ll be right behind you,” he says, and Tyler nods.

Tyler then gets up to leave, beginning to pull on his clothes that lay haphazardly on Josh’s bedroom floor. He pulls on a shirt that’s probably Josh’s, but nobody says anything about it.

“So you won’t fuck me?” Tyler has his jeans pulled up almost all the way. Josh laughs.

“Later, dude.”

Tyler is out the door, leaving Josh naked in his bedroom, the wide window throwing light into the room.

* * *

Josh doesn’t hear from Tyler for the rest of the day, which is strange of him. There’s usually little updates of where they are, what they’re doing. _At the store. Want some ice cream?_ Or sometimes _this dude just fell off his bike in the street. Fuckin idiot._

But this time, there’s nothing.

Josh has already texted Tyler a few times, asking what he’s up to, but has gotten no response. Deciding to take matters into his own hands, he stops by Tyler’s place on the way to work. His apartment is smaller than Josh’s, and Josh is glad they spend more time at his own place than at Tyler’s.

Josh knocks on the door, but doesn’t get a response. Not that he was expecting one.  He lets himself in with the spare key Tyler had given him a while back. Immediately, Josh takes note of how cold it is in the apartment as he drifts into Tyler’s bedroom.

“What are you doing?” Tyler is sitting in the middle of his bedroom floor, wearing nothing but underwear and a shirt that probably- no- definitely belongs to Josh. There’s a big ugly bruise on Tyler’s knee, but Josh doesn’t ask what it’s from, just sticks to asking what he’s doing. It’s so cold in the room, and if Tyler notices either the temperature or Josh’s question, he doesn’t show it. His head is ducked, down turned toward the book in his lap. “Ty,” Josh says, finally grabbing his attention.

“Reading,” Tyler responds. So apparently, he did hear Josh’s first question. Josh doesn’t have his attention for long, though, because Tyler briefly looks up to Josh but promptly drops his gaze back down to the book.

“Why is it so cold in here?” Tyler shrugs. He closes the book.

“They shut off my heat.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t pay the bill.” Josh blinks.

“Why not?”

“Lost my job.”

“Did you quit or did they fire you?” Josh knows Tyler, knows how he can spin things.

“They said I couldn’t flirt with customers.” He’s spinning things.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“I flirted with girls.”

“You don’t even like girls.” Josh is tired.

And Tyler never says anything back, just cups his hands around his mouth and blows hot breath into them.

“It’s cold,” he says, and Josh is tired. Tyler drops his hands back down to his lap, then suddenly seems to perk up with an idea. He jumps up, pounces on Josh. Josh, who had made his way over to the bed and sat down, but is now being pushed back gently, straddled predatorily. “Can you warm me up?” Tyler smirks. Josh laughs, reaches one hand around to grab onto the back of Tyler’s head, and kisses him deeply, sweetly, tongues not hesitating to meet.

“I have to go to work.” Tyler pouts.

“Can I come over later?”

“Sure.”

* * *

Later, as dictated by Tyler, is about halfway through Josh’ shift. He lets himself into Josh’s apartment with his own spare key, one used far more often than the spare Josh has to Tyler’s apartment. Josh’s bedroom is much warmer than his own.

When Josh comes back later, he’s not surprised to see Tyler sitting there on his own bed, busying himself with his phone. He stares a moment, then jumps onto the bed next to him.

“Hey.” He ruffles Tyler’s hair.

“Hi.” Tyler smiles lightly, shuts his phone off to turn toward Josh. Josh, who puts his hand high on Tyler’s thigh with every intention to finish what Tyler had started earlier, but suddenly can only focus on how dirty Tyler’s fingers are. He stops.

“What were you doing before?” Tyler looks down to his hands, then to Josh, then to the window in the corner of the room.

“You never open that window. It’s dusty.”

“Were you trying to open it?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“I told you I was going to jump out of it one day.”

“And I told you I’d be right behind you.” Tyler just laughs, and turns over to lay on top of Josh.

* * *

“Tyler’s been weird.”

“Tyler’s always been weird.” Josh rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, but. I don’t know. Something’s different.”

“How?” Mark asks through bites of a sandwich. Josh grimaces. He wishes he would eat neater.

“He just keeps talking about this window at my place.”

“A _window?_ ”

“He keeps saying he’s going to jump out of it.” Mark puts the sandwich down.

“And what do you say back?"

“That I’d be right behind him,” Josh says, and suddenly, he realizes how stupid that sounds.

“Why would you say that?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re encouraging him to kill himself.”

“I’m not. He’s kidding. Forget I said anything. I’m not doing that.”

* * *

Josh goes home at night and drills screws into the window, right through from the bottom of the window and into the window sill. Shut for good. Tyler’s kidding.

* * *

A few days later, and Tyler is back to ignoring Josh. Every text goes unanswered, and Josh begins to feel uneasy about this little game they play. He drives himself back to Tyler’s place to check up on him once again, and lets himself in, once again.

He’s pleasantly surprised to find that the place is not as cold as it was a few days ago, and he hopes that means that Tyler found a way to pay for heating.

It’s quiet in the apartment, eerily so, and calls out Tyler’s name. When he gets no response, he goes into his bedroom, assuming he’s napping or reading or doing some other silent activity. But he’s not, Josh finds, which makes sense, because Tyler has never been one to make things easy. Josh wanders through the rest of the place, checking to see if Tyler is anywhere, anywhere at all. He finds himself subconsciously checking all the windows in the apartment, checking to see if they’re closed and locked.

He sends another text to Tyler asking where he is, but he doesn’t get a response. Not that he was expecting one. He sighs, heads out.

Josh figures that he has nothing better to do tonight, and decides to go out and run some errands. He stops by the shops, picking up some things he needs for his place, and even picks up a bouquet of flowers for Tyler. He doesn’t know what he did wrong, but he figures he can’t go wrong with flowers. Lilies, too. Tyler’s favorite.

After he goes out, he heads back to Tyler’s place one more time, because maybe, _maybe,_  Tyler went back home. But he didn’t, of course, so once again, Josh finds himself alone in Tyler’s apartment. He sets the flowers down on Tyler’s bedroom dresser and leaves silently. He still hasn’t gotten a text back from Tyler.

* * *

There is a very specific feeling linked with a horrible realization. It is the feeling of your stomach suddenly feeling empty like you haven’t eaten in days but suddenly flipping to the feeling of being so full of something that is threatening to spew out at any given second. It is the feeling of disbelief followed by regret, but often regret for something you have not even done yourself. And it is the feeling of hope that whatever _appears_ to have happened, hasn’t actually happened at all.

It is the feeling that Josh gets when he sees the window in his bedroom wide open.

Halfway across his room, on the way to getting his phone charger, Josh stops, completely frozen in place. The window is never open. The window _couldn’t_ have been opened, it was drilled shut. But there’s a power drill on the ground beneath the window and Josh knows that it’s just as easy to remove screws with it as it is to drill them in the first place and suddenly, he feel faint. He can’t look. He doesn’t want to look. He drags his feet over to the window and he’s not breathing. He can’t breathe.

He looks out the window and down to the street below and there’s a body there, and it’s a body he knows very well and there’s blood and there’s a crowd and there’s commotion and he pulls his head back inside and he vomits. All over his bedroom floor, he throws up for what feels like hours but it’s not long before he’s just throwing up stomach acid and there’s nothing left to throw up besides blood.

And it’s not long before he hears police sirens in the distance and he stalls briefly before realizing that he told Tyler that if he jumped out of that wide window, he’d be right there behind him.

He stays true to his word.


End file.
